Dr Hulsebus presents "Ask the Chiropractor". This is a short podcast with a different topic we, as chiropractors, get asked. He tries to give a straight forward quick answer. If you have a question about chiropractic only qualified person to answer is a chiropractor. He will present research and then break it down so easy to understand. Dr Hulsebus is a third generation Palmer Graduate. He is a member of the International Chiropractic Association, Illinois Prairie State Chiropractic and Professional Hockey Player Chiropractic Society. www.rockforddc.com
When you are pregnant, your body undergoes massive structural shifts. Your abdomen expands, your ribcage flares, and your center of gravity alters—frequently resulting in lower back pain, pelvic discomfort, and stubborn nerve issues like pregnancy carpal tunnel. For many women, this is the one time in their lives when avoiding standard prescription medications is highly critical, making a natural, holistic approach the ideal choice.
In this episode of Ask the Chiropractor, Dr. Brant Hulsebus explains the biomechanics of pregnancy and the power of the Webster technique. As a Palmer College of Chiropractic graduate and the team chiropractor for the Rockford IceHogs, Dr. Hulsebus breaks down how specialized prenatal care reduces physical stress on both mom and baby. Learn why we adjust the sacrum to down-regulate the nervous system, how specific round ligament trigger points relieve uterine tension, and how establishing pelvic balance gives your baby the room they need to move out of a breech position naturally.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
Safety first: Why chiropractic care is completely safe and effective through all three trimesters.
The Webster blueprint: A detailed breakdown of the gentle six-phase trigger point and drop-table protocol.
Uterine mechanics: How the round ligament—the only ligament with muscle fibers—impacts fetal positioning.
Proactive wellness: Why expectant mothers should begin prenatal structural care early rather than waiting for structural issues to arise.
Clinical adaptations: How specialized pelvic drop mechanisms and custom pillows keep you comfortable while face-down.
Interprofessional care: How our long-standing relationships with local Rockford midwives optimize your birthing team.
Have a question about the Webster technique, pregnancy back strain, or prenatal joint health? Leave a comment or message on our platforms, and you might be featured as our next question of the week!
Hello, Dr. Brant Hulsebus here, and welcome to another edition of Ask the Chiropractor. Ask the Chiropractor is my little podcast that I do when someone has a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, I try to answer. I'm a chiropractor here in Rockford, Illinois. I'm a proud graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic, and I'm happy to be the team chiropractor of the Rockford IceHogs. Let's dive into it. hi there. So if you were watching last week, I kinda hinted to another area of study. My mentor, Dr. Dan Murphy, told me that your chiropractic pathway will change as your life changes. When I first graduated chiropractic school, I loved sports. I, I was… You know, if you're looking for me at Palmer College, there's no joke, I was in the student union watching SportsCenter with some of my friends, uh, Greg, Ryan. You guys know who you are. We'd always be in there watching it, uh, in between classes. So when I first got out of chiropractic school, I started working with the IceHogs here in Rockford, Illinois. Couple years later, I, I started to have- became a dad, started having kids. And, and my last kids came 10 weeks early. They're twins. They were born 10 weeks early. And at Palmer College of Chiropractic, we learn a lot about pregnancy and newborn babies, but all of a sudden I, I felt like I wanted to learn some more. I felt like I need to know more now that, now that I'm the patient, not the doctor kinda situation. I, I wanted to learn more. And I had a unique thing happen to me. Right after they were born, I tore the muscles out of my elbow. I had to have my elbow muscles reattached with a plate in my elbow. I was out of commission for six months, couldn't see patients. And my surgeon gave me the best advice ever. He said, "Go back to school. Make yourself a better chiropractor." He had the same injury. He did the same thing. He didn't go to chiropractic school, though. He went back to orthopedic school and made himself a better orthopedic doctor. So I went back and took classes on pediatrics. I did a whole year of it. I got my certification in the Webster technique, and I would've got my certification in the pediatric group if I wasn't so politically involved in my profession. They withheld my certification because of my chiropractic politics, but that's a different story for a different time. So I got the education, and I got to learn the Webster technique, and I got to learn a lot about women who get pregnant and how we can help them through chiropractic care. So if you're experiencing pregnancy in Rockford, Illinois, and you're looking for a prenatal chiropractor, man, I've, I've studied it all and done it all, so we'd love to meet you. You know, lower back pains are really common when you're pregnant because the pregnancy's gonna change your posture. You- It has to when you're walking around pregnant. The… You, you're gonna expand your abdomen. Your ribcage comes up and goes out and jams the base of your neck, giving you pregnancy carpal tunnel and all kinds of things that have happened. And now you're having lower back pain, other aches and pains, carpal tunnel, and you now for the f- one time in your life, the only time maybe in your life, they're gonna say, "Maybe medicine's not the best thing to take because you're pregnant. Maybe you should try something more holistic and natural." Now, as chiropractors, we think you should always try something more holistic and natural first and then go to medicine. Medicine second, natural first. But let's talk about pregnancy, what's actually happening. Is it safe to go to the chiropractor when you're pregnant? Absolutely, 100%. You know, we've been taking care of pregnant women forever. My whole family got into chiropractic care back in the 1940s because my grandmother was having a hard time conceiving, and Dr. Palmer adjusted her, and she got her f- fertility back, and then she was able to get pregnant. And she got her pregnant- the, she got adjusted the entire pregnancy at Palmer College by Dr. Palmer. So he was there the whole time. I believe he even gave my uncle his first-ever chiropractic adjustment. So yes, it is totally safe. We get taught how to take care of pregnant people at Palmer College. We do it all the time. You know, I, it's, it's been fun for me taking care of pregnant women because, you know, a lot of times we're, we're all they got. Our tables change and adapt to the pregnancy, so we don't, we, we have ways to change our tables to adapt to it, so we can still adjust you safely and correctly. Um, if you're a patient before you're pregnant, we love that because we kinda have X-rays of your spine before. If you become pregnant, then you become a patient, we don't X-ray you. We, we, we just do the best we can without the X-rays because we have more tools than just X-rays Some reasons people come to see us when they're pregnant. One, their lower back hurts, their helps, their hips hurt. Two, they have problems when they're walking. They're, they're, they feel pain and discomfort when they're walking, things we take care of. Maybe they have pain in the front, in the groin area, chiropractic adjustments. Pregnancy carpal tunnel, their hands are falling asleep or going numb. See it all the time. Neck pain, again, the ribcage changes shape, comes up, pushes everything up, neck pain, extremely common. Decreased range of motion in the neck. Headaches, again, all things that chiropractors can help with. But one of them that maybe you never thought of is a breech baby. You see, there's a technique called the Webster technique, like Webster's Dictionary. The Webster was named after Larry Webster, a chiropractor. He developed a six-phase chiropractic adjustment that we do in order to relax the ligaments and the nerve structures around the womb to allow the womb to relax and expand and give baby the room that it needs to flip over. Now, we don't really get nervous about breech babies when they come. Sometimes mom says, "Hey, I'm at week 22, my baby's breech." That's okay. You're not supposed to be there yet. But, uh, see, I'm a certified Webster chiropractor, and if I look for a chiropractor to do this, I'm, I'm gonna ask, "Are you certified in the Webster?" Because if they are, that means they've spent a lot of their practice studying pregnancies and everything else. If they've heard of Websters or had a friend teach them, they, they dabbled in it, but they don't have it. So I'd look for someone certified in Websters. Here at Rockford, Illinois, I'm definitely certified in Websters, and I'm not alone at Rockford. There's a lot of us that have that But what we're gonna do with the Websters is the first thing we're gonna look at is mom's tailbone. The nerves that come out of your tailbone are the ones that t- that turn off the fight and flight response, which keeps the muscles locked up in the pelvis. So by adjusting mom's tailbone, we help the fight and flight turns off, and we help the nerves there relax, which hopefully will help the whole area relax. Then we do a piriformis muscle stimulus. The piriformis muscle is the one you sit on, and if one of those is tight or irritated, it's gonna cause the sacrum and the pelvis to be twisting and turning, cramming the baby. The next thing we do is we do a trigger point on the ligament that you sit on. We get that ligament to relax. If that ligament's tight, it's gonna cause things to shift and lock up and not allow baby to move the way we want the baby to be able to move. The next phase is we stretch out your hip flexors, your psoas muscle, P-S-O-A-S. We have you lay on your back, and we find this muscle. And if we find it's tight through a certain test that we do, then we stretch it. A lot of times we'll teach other people in your family how to do this, so if you bring somebody with you, we're always happy to teach this stretch. Then we do a trigger point on the round ligament of the uterus. You see, the round ligament of the uterus is the only ligament in the human anatomy to have a muscle in it. If it has a muscle in it, we can do a trigger point on it. We can help it relax. And last but not least is a spot in the pubic synthesis where the two bones come together, that if you are having irregular or lack of contractions when you're supposed to, there's a move there we can do. Now, I've learned this for many, many years, and I've never had to do it, but it's nice to know it's available, the last phase. So the Webster technique's really neat. It's, it's, it's, it's not like you see on YouTube or TikTok videos. We're not grabbing you, slamming you. It's trigger point, table drops, nice, easy, gentle adjustment. So if you've never been to a chiropractor before, but the videos you see on social media totally freak you out, this is nothing like that. Not one bit. But make sure your chiropractor is certified in the Webster technique. I have a certificate hanging on the wall in my, in my hallway. You can come over, take a look at it if you want. So if the Webster certification's there, then you want to go see the chiropractor and get adjusted by the chiropractor. Now, whenever you're pregnant, we start the Webster right away, because why wait till the baby's breached and fix it? Why don't we just take care of it right away? So you'll come in. What we'll do is we'll take the table, depending how pregnant you are. Our abdominal piece, when you lay face down, locks in different positions, giving you all the room you need. We can also crank up the pelvic piece if that's still not enough room. We have pillows for under your chest, and we're able to do the easy adjustment. Now, we always do the Webster first, then we do everything else afterwards, because we want to make sure the baby's good, then you're good. You know, as a soon-to-be parent, you're, you're now second fiddle, right? The baby always comes first. So we do that adjustment. It's really, really easy to do. We want to make sure the baby has all the room they can grow and develop. So if you're pregnant and you don't have a chiropractor, I do recommend it's, it's good to do. Now, is it safe to do it all throughout the whole pregnancy? Absolutely. I've adjusted people on their way to the hospital. I have adjusted people in the hospital before COVID. I've gone in and gave them adjustments right there. I'm not talking just about my wife or my sister. I've taken care of regular patients in the hospital before there was COVID. Was I supposed to do that? I don't know. Where did I do that, and when did I do that? I'm not gonna tell you, because the patient just needed it, so we did it. So you can get adjusted the moment of the delivery. Now, my wife got adjusted the whole time she was giving birth to make the birth go as simple as possible. So if, if, if you're nervous about getting adjusted, the first trimester's no big deal. Tell your chiropractor you're pregnant though, because we're gonna start seeing changes in you that's not gonna make any sense, so it's okay to tell your chiropractor when you are pregnant. There's no reason to, to fear the chiropractic. In my community, we work with tons of midwives. They all know us by name. They know what we do. I get referrals from midwives all the time for the breech baby situation. You know, it's just been an amazing process of being able to help all these moms and take care of them and, and see these babies come to be. So it's very safe, very easy to do. Yeah, we can adjust all of you, but we do the Webster first, then we adjust the rest of you afterwards. Been doing it for a long time myself, personally, taking care of pregnant women. Um, can a chiropractor flip a breech baby? That's, that goes back to the Webster technique. And I want to tell you something too, because on the internet you see a lot of stupid stuff. We will never grab the baby and try to manipulate the baby and move them around. I believe there's some maybe midwives do it. I don't know. I'm not a midwife, but there is something that sometimes you will see somebody actually try to physically move the baby. That is not what chiropractors do. That is not at all. There's like anything like that. The Webster technique is very simple, and if you're nervous about it, before you do it, talk to the chiropractor. The odds are they have another pregnant patient already coming, and that pregnant patient would probably let you come watch first. Obviously, we have to have permission a- and get everyone's blessing. But I've had more than one pregnant mother who's nervous about getting the care watch another pregnant mom get adjusted and realize, "Well, that's-- I can do that." So go ahead and ask. So if, if you're a mom who's pregnant and you're thinking about trying chiropractic care, maybe your OBGYN will tell you the chiropractors can help. Maybe. But as a chiropractor, I'm telling you we can. If you're in Rockford, Illinois, stop by. I'd love to meet you. If you're somewhere else in the country, you can go to all kinds of websites to figure out whether or not your chiropractors have some advanced training in, in pediatrics. Just go to their website. Read their stuff. A lot of times, like we don't stay on national websites because they want us to pay so much money just to have our name on there every month. Just go right to the chiropractor themselves and see what they do or don't do. It, it's, can make a big difference, huge difference. And of course, we're natural and drug-free, and every pregnant mom wants that. So going to the chiropractor when you're safe is 100%… When you're pregnant, excuse me, is 100% safe, and you should definitely do it. If you have questions about chiropractic or chiropractic care, leave a message below. We'll get back to you. You know, we talked about the being pregnant. Let's talk about after the baby comes. Does she still go to the chiropractor? Absolutely. I'll talk about that next week. Come on back. Thank you.
